At night, our office is filled with people staring into computer monitors in dim light.

Our eyes weren’t designed for this. Neither were our computer screens. In fact, monitor lighting is designed to mimic sunlight. This is great during the daytime hours. But at night, against the backdrop of a dark room? Turns out this faux-sunlight is super bright and headache-inducing.

Here are two free apps to help ease eyestrain (and maybe even improve late-night productivity):

ScreenShade
If you’re using a Mac, it’s easy to use the OS X brightness display settings to dim your screen. But sometimes when you’re sitting in a dark room, the lowest setting is still too bright. ScreenShade allows you to darken the screen even more. Plus, you can dim (or un-dim) your screen and any external monitors simultaneously.

One dev actually came over and gave me a hug after installing this one.

f.lux
As the sun goes down, f.lux slowly washes over your monitor with a warmer color temperature — matching it to look like the indoor lights in your home or office. When the sun goes back up, your monitor returns to its normal vibe. Just enter your location and the kind of lighting you have (or want) and f.lux automatically syncs with the local sunset/sunrise schedule.

]]>https://www.knewton.com/blog/knerds/manage-your-monitor-and-save-your-eyes/feed/2Knerd Tip: How to Protect Your Hard Drivehttps://www.knewton.com/blog/knerds/knerd-tip-how-to-protect-your-hard-drive/
https://www.knewton.com/blog/knerds/knerd-tip-how-to-protect-your-hard-drive/#commentsThu, 19 May 2011 13:00:14 +0000http://www.knewton.com/blog/?p=15413Read more]]>The hard drive on my work laptop failed to boot last week after encountering a bunch of corrupted files. After trying all the options for fixing it myself—solutions like “reset the PRAM”—I took it to our system administrator and asked him to completely wipe the hard drive rather than try to fix the files and risk dragging out a repair.

Sound like a disaster? Actually, it wasn’t so bad — thanks to a few key preparations I’d made in anticipation of this moment.

Here’s why I wasn’t worried about wiping the hard drive:

Dropbox: day-to-day storage, synching, and versioning

We use Dropbox at Knewton to sync files with groups who need them, but I also keep most of my important files in the Dropbox folder. I use one folder called “Current Work” that always has recent stuff—the same way someone typically uses the “desktop” folder. It removes any hassle from working on multiple computers. Plus, every single file is versioned, so I have access to old versions if something goes awry.

I use a Pro 50 account that backs up 50 GB for $10/month.

After HD refresh: installed Dropbox. All the files were re-synched over the course of 4 hours.

Backblaze: continuous backup

My entire hard drive backs itself up continuously for $5/month.

After HD refresh: downloaded a 37 GB zip file of my old files—6 hours overnight thanks to FiOS—and unpacked it using StuffIt Expander (free). Copied over the files I wanted to recover, trashed the rest.

Xmarks: bookmark synching

My applications. Before wiping the HD, I wrote down a list of the apps I wanted to reinstall (I’ve included the list at the end of this post). After getting a fresh OS X install with MS Office, I spent another 30 minutes installing the remaining apps and entering registration keys (thanks, email confirmations). I recovered the plist (preferences) files for some of the important apps like Coda, but otherwise it wasn’t a big deal to start fresh.